The Potomac Highlands Dispatch - the online newspaper

Help us - a local business - begin reporting in your area. The PhDispatch team aims to start small, do well and expand. Won’t you help us be in your neighborhood?

The Potomac Highlands Dispatch has an affordable advertising option for you. And best yet - sign on in the first 3 months*, at our beginning, and your rates are guaranteed not to increase for at least 36 months!*

To better serve your needs - and to satisfy your accountants and advertising calendar - we offer several flat rate ad plans that let you know, from the beginning, when your ad begins and when it is set to end. This means that, as your business relationship with The PhD continues to grow, the value of your ad will continue to increase.

Again, there is an affordable ad plan for you and your office. On www.PhDispatch.com, rates range from the premium homepage and section page banner ads (which begin at only $120 per month) to the more common box ads - $75 per month for exclusivity and only $50 a month to have a “shared” space with one or more businesses. In that instance, the ad rotates between that of your business and another every few seconds.

Box ads & Banner ads
1. An exclusive box ad (roughly business card size) for $75/month on any page desired. The ad can link to a company's website, a promotional flier, etc. However, the location of that box ad on any desired page is not guaranteed. In other words, it could be "above the fold" and visible to viewers when first arriving to that page or viewers might have to scroll down to see it.

2. For $25 less, the box ad would not be exclusive but that space would be "shared" with other businesses/announcements and would rotate about several seconds.

3. A banner ad - 2 spots available on the home page and 1 spot available on the primary Sports page - the two most visited sections of the website, by far. It's $1,500/year for this space for exclusivity - $1,000/year if "shared" with another business. Same level of flexibility here - can be linked to just about anything.

4. Other sections - Neighborhoods, Opinion, Education and Community Calendar - also have banner ads available but, due to a lower volume of viewers, those yearly costs are not as much as the main page or Sports page.

Video advertising
1. With a known event coming up - for example, a playoff basketball game I know PhDispatch.com will cover - I can put a hi-res JPEG image of your choosing at the beginning, middle or end that game-based video(s).

2. We can do a video commercial. Much like a box ad, this would be about the size of a business card but the viewer would be required to hit "play" to view the commercial. If you have a video already made - GREAT! It'll save you some money and I can just use that. If not, I can do it (for a fee).

Event advertising
Have a specific interest in attracting the Cumberland crowd? Your best bet might be to sponsor individual event pages, such as sports coverage of Allegany, Fort Hill or Bishop Walsh sports teams - or, if looking west, Frostburg as well as Northern and Southern in Garrett County.

A company (or individual) can sponsor (for example) every Miners sports event page (only $25 per event).

Of course, event-based advertising doesn't have to be based on PhDispatch.com's thorough sports coverage.

* Must sign an agreement on or before Feb. 28, 2011 and keep an agreement in tact for the entire 36-month period.